Catalogue of Local Inclusive Public Policies

Public policies
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Gender Indicators System of the City of Buenos Aires (SIGBA)

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Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires - Argentina

Region
Latin America and the Caribbean
Range of Demographic Size
1,000,000 inhabitants or more (metropolis)

5.1 End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere in the world.

5.5 Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life.

5.2 Eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation.

5.3 Eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation.

5.4 Recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally appropriate.

E - Gender equality

Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

• Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence against Women (Convention of Belém do Pará)

Summary

The Gender Indicators System of the City of Buenos Aires (SIGBA) is a set of statistical and management data with a systematic perspective of gender autonomy (in consonance with the guidelines of the Division for Gender Affairs of ECLAC). It helps raise awareness of the differences in the situation of men and women in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires (CABA). It has the triple purpose of making the gender situation visible, inform public discussion and encourage evidence-based decision-making to achieve greater equality in opportunities.

It is characterized by its open format, i.e., the data may be easily downloaded from the Web for free, and can be shared and reused by the users. Likewise, the system programming is also available in open code.

Implementation Date:

Start: 03 / 1 / 2018

End: End: Currently in force

Gender and sexual diversity - Women Gender and sexual diversity - Gender violence Gender and sexual diversity - Domestic violence
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Gender statistics have been recognized as essential tools to raise awareness of the different gender inequalities manifestations, and play a leading role in stereotype removal, policy formulation and follow up in order to achieve full equality between men and women. However, at international level, there a only a few statistical systems which incorporate a gender perspective in their indicators. Only four European countries have a statistical system with gender perspective and there are even fewer at local government level. The gender gap in statistics is a global problem and has become a priority in the agendas of the main international organizations such as UN women, OECD and ECLAC. It is essential to have relevant sex-differential information so as to measure the current situation and foster evidence-based public decision making, encourage the design of more effective public policies and monitor the course of government interventions.
• To make the situation of women in CABA visible and monitor its progress over time through the publication and systematization of economic, political and social-demographic indicators. • To inform and improve the quality of the public discussion in terms of public policy from official data to be used in future. Journalists, experts, activists, academics and opinion makers use this information as a common and rigorous base. • To foster evidence-based public decision-making, encouraging the design of more effective public policies; and monitoring the course of government interventions.
SIGBA was the result of cross-sectional work between different areas: General Secretariat and International Relations, Statistics Directorate and General Women Directorate.
Most of the information comprised in the system comes from statistical sources surveyed by the General Directorate of Statistics and Surveys of the City. However, a large part of the information was provided by several areas of the city government, the community organizations and the legislative and judicial branches. This information was provided through a long articulation process which managed to incorporate essential indicators such as: the percentage of women in top hierarchical and managerial positions in the City Police; the percentage of magistrates (ministers, chamber members, judges and peace justices), women in the Superior Court of Justice and Council of Magistrates of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires; and violence-related cases in charge of the Office of Domestic Violence of the National Supreme Court.
In 1998, the Legislature of the City of Buenos Aires passed Law No. 91, which established that sex and age variables had to be specified in population and related statistics. In 2000, the Legislature passed Law No. 474 which established the Plan for Equal Real Opportunities and Treatment between Women and Men, and the incorporation of the gender perspective when preparing all statistics, as well as into the information resulting from the different areas. In 2017, Law No. 5.924 was passed to ensure the incorporation of the gender approach in all the productions from the Statistic System of the City.
Public officers and public employees
Society in general
Systems of production, survey, systematization and monitoring of information (data)
SIGBA was the result of cross-sectional work between different government areas: • The General and International Relations Secretariat submitted the idea and managed to make a government priority out of it. It received international support for the system design and managed the provision of information on the city programs by the ministries. • The Statistics Directorate systematized the information and programmed the web portal which houses both data and charts. The indicators are periodically updated. • The General Women Directorate led the consultations with gender experts, who revised the indicators and made suggestions on how to strengthen the system. Most of the information comes from statistical sources surveyed by the General Directorate of Statistics and Surveys of the City. However, several areas of the city government, the community organizations and the legislative and judicial branches also contributed information. Besides, the system adds management data from the residents’ records of the use of the services offered by the government. The information is arranged based on the conceptual framework of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in three dimensions: 1) the decision autonomy includes female participation variables in the different spheres of the city public life: executive, legislative and judicial branches and in the districts; 2) the economic autonomy comprises different indicators on paid and unpaid jobs, and access to credentials collected through the annual surveys conducted at homes on labor and time management indicators; and 3) the physical autonomy compiles data on gender violence, access to health, sexual health and reproductive health, as well as use and safety in the public space.
The system intends to close the gender gap in the city statistics and is characterized by its open format construction. This means that the data may be easily downloaded from the Web for free as an open standard file so that they can be shared and reused by the users. Likewise, the system programming is also available in open code. A few countries in the world (four in Latin America) have gender indicator systems and only few cities (two in Europe) have the gender information grouped in such a way. This is why CABA, with its own platform to make information on the differential situation between men and women available, is at the forefront of addressing the gender issue from the point of view of data generation.
The initiative was technically supported by the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC) and the UN Women Regional Office. ECLAC provided technical assistance to build the system through the training of Buenos Aires City Government technicians. Likewise, a revision of the selected indicators was made. UN Women made a consultant available for the technical revision of the system.
During the system design process, work panels were organized with the three government areas involved, together with civil society experts, in order to outline the indicators and the potential system sources. After it was launched, they participated in the Do-a-thon organized by Open Heroines, during the International Open Data Conference (IODC), which consisted in participative work panels made up of international experts on data and gender issues who analyzed and gave recommendations on how to improve system accessibility through the implementation of more accessible and user-friendly views. Based on this experience, a gender data camp was organized in November 2018, jointly with the city legislature and Fundación Conocimiento Abierto. The session was attended by data and communications professionals who analyzed with the challenges of data analysis and view at SIGBA and who proposed real improvement projects.
The General Directorate of Statistics and Surveys (DGEyC) and the General and International Relations Secretariat have an annual budget which is specially allocated to public policy promotion. Besides, the DGEyC has a technical team whose function is to maintain and update the system, among others.
Since the system was launched, different panels with expert audiences and information users have been organized to assess and incorporate recommendations for improvement. At the same time and on an monthly basis, they also monitor and analyze how many people use the system and their interactions to keep on adding improvements.
Local goverment
At present, it has 92 indicators, and the data is annually updated by the General Directorate of Statistics and Surveys. This policy allows to improve the quality of public discussion since there is official data available to ground the arguments and enables the government to make decisions based on evidence, design better policies and monitor the course of its interventions. In this regard, the SIGBA data revealed that women devote an additional hour and half a day to caring for members of their household. In addition, according to SIGBA, there is currently a 13-point difference between the percentage of men and women who are part of the labor market. Hence, to foster a more equitable distribution of caring jobs and to promote women insertion in the labor market, they launched a new care-license model of shared care for city government employees, which extended the number of days for parents or non-gestational parents to 45 days so that they can take care of their newborn or adopted children. In relation to decision-making autonomy, an example of this would be the GCBA Leading Women program, which seeks to promote female participation in managerial and higher city government positions. The policy arises from the identification of low female participation rates in managerial and higher government positions (35.5% in 2019).
SIGBA is based on the collection and production of statistical and management information which is systematized through computerized records.
On the system webpage, https://www.estadisticaciudad.gob.ar/sigba/, the data can be downloaded for free in an open and standard format which can be shared and reused by the users.
The launch of the Gender Indicators System of the City of Buenos Aires has served as a key background for the implementation of the National Gender Indicators System, which adopts the same conceptual dimensions and structures as the CABA System and makes it possible to understand the situation of women at a national level.
(Español) Información del SIGBA
(Español) Marco de referencia del SIGBA

Instrumentos

5.1 End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere in the world.

5.5 Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life.

5.2 Eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation.

5.3 Eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation.

5.4 Recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally appropriate.

E - Gender equality
Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
• Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence against Women (Convention of Belém do Pará)

Location

Region
Latin America and the Caribbean
Range of Demographic Size
1,000,000 inhabitants or more (metropolis)

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